Use The Best Sellers In Books List
Whether you plan to sell new or used books, you cant waste money on losers. You have to find books that will sell. Luckily, all you need to determine that is Amazons Best Sellers in Books list.
Best Sellers in Books only displays the top 100 sellers. But all books rank somewhere on the list, and you can find it on their listing.
High Rank = High Competition
Extremely popular books will have stiff competition. For example, the #1 bestseller shown below has 218 used copies and 119 new copies available. The used price drops as low as $1.61. Thats less than Amazons closing feetheyre paying Amazon to take their book!
Youll see this a lot with the top 10,000 books. Sometimes, the fast sales can make up for it, but not always.
Low Rank = Slow Sales
Now for the other end of the spectrum: unpopular books will take forever to sell. For example, this book is ranked lower than #650,000 . Look at the number of offers and the prices:
That pileup of new and used copies of a book published in 1992, for prices as low as $10 new and $1 used, shows that it just isnt a fast mover these days. The price competition has become as difficult as for a bestseller.
Medium Rank = Just Right
What you generally want is something in the middle. For example, this book ranks around #30,750. Look at the prices and the number of sellers again:
but above the multi-hundred-thousands .
Set your own ceiling and bottom based on experimentation and your storage capacity.
How To Sell A Book Nobody Else Is Selling
Listing a unique book or something youve written yourself takes a bit more time and effort. Youll need to create a listing, which involves steps like writing a description.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, Ill just point you to this Amazon tutorial for the basics:
Creating a listing is fairly straightforward. But creating it well, and making sure people will find your book and want to buy it, is a little more complicated. These resources will help you do it right:
Be Careful When Shipping
If youre going to do a lot of bookselling, you might want to invest in some shipping envelopes and other packing materials. Make sure youre using something that is water-resistant, and if its a book that will show bumps and dings, like a nice hardcover, make sure you wrap it carefully.
Also, dont forget to make note of the tracking numbers. The bookselling site may send you a shipping label, but youll still be responsible to make sure the book arrives at its destination, and youll need the tracking number to communicate with the post office or shipping company.
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How To Sell Old Books Online On Clankart
Well, you can sell your old used books, old study tools like drafters, geometry, lab coats, old study notes or whatever used study materials you have, very easily on Clankart.
Earning money by selling your old used books, old study tools, old exam papers or any other used study materials is just 3 steps away from you 🙂
Where Can I Find The Status Of My Trade In

The most recent status of your trade-in is available online anytime in Your Trade-In Account. If you need help submitting the items you want to trade in, you can contact Amazon Customer Service via phone, chat, or email by clicking the Contact Us button on any Help page. You can find full program details by visiting our page.
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Reason : Amazon Makes Your Life Easier
On Amazon, you can choose between three fulfillment options:
- Fulfillment by Merchant : You list your product on Amazon, pack it and ship it to your customers.
- Amazon Vendors : You sell your products directly to Amazon.
- Processing by Amazon : You list your products on Amazon. Amazon stores, packs, and ships your product to your customers.
Amazon FBA is a great way to .
That’s because FBA sellers only have to do marketing for their products, and they don’t have to worry about storage or shipping.
When you start selling on Amazon, you can pack and ship products on your own. But as soon as you sell more products, I recommend switching to Amazon FBA.
Tips From A Book Hound
Shane was kind enough to bring some of his 15 years of first hand knowledge on how to make money selling used books to this post. He specialized mostly in first edition antique books and collectible older books.
If you tend to like to study things in-depth before jumping in, the ideas of learning to locate, identify, and buy used books before flipping them for a profit can be overwhelming. Theres a LOT of information involved in becoming a book hound .
Enough it can quickly overwhelm you.
But dont worry. If youre excited about the potential profit in that yard sale, garage sale, or library sale, if you love the feel of a physical book in the hands, and then the large number after a $ that shows up after you sell it, then dont let the world of flipping books intimidate you.
Follow these tips, think of it as an adventure, and theres a good chance youll catch the bug, too! And make a tidy profit along the way.
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Selling Used Books On Amazon: The Riches Are In The Niches
Books might not seem glamorous compared to hot toys, wholesale deals, or trendy electronics, but you can make a lot of money selling used books on Amazon.
For established Amazon sellers, adding books to your business model can be a profitable way to stock your inventory with high ROI items.
And for newbie sellers, you can buy a whole lot of books for not a lot of bucks.
Lets face it, most established booksellers on Amazon can barely stand the thought of spending more than $3 per book!
And even though you can score books for low prices, that doesnt mean that youll be selling books on Amazon for pennies!
Even used copies of books can really hold their value .
If you or one of your kids have ever forked over $300+ for a single college textbook, you may have wondered about the lucrative textbook industry. And if you’ve already dabbled in FBA, you may be curious about how to sell books on Amazon.
A lot of potential booksellers are more than a little bit skeptical. They message me questions like:
Are there really used books selling on Amazon for more than $10? Don’t books lose their value after a few years? Why would someone pay for a book with highlighting and underlining? Aren’t textbooks the only books that make any money?
There is no reason to be skeptical about selling used books! Because there is truly no shortage of used books that you can buy for just a few dollars and then resell for $20, $50, or, yes, even $300+ online.
Start Listing Your Books
Since books are an unrestricted item on Amazon, you can sell new and used books, magazines, textbooks, magazines, even the sheet music your kids stopped using two months after they begged for lessons. The Amazon seller app can walk you through how to list them.
A product listing includes the book’s ISBN number, a description that includes price, condition, and shipping options, and additional identifying information. If someone else has already listed the same book, Amazon will help fill in some of the details. Once you’ve filled in all of the pertinent info, your book will appear on a product details page, which you’ve already seen if you shop the site.
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How To Sell Books Online
While there are a couple of different approaches to take, the one I like best is buying used books on Amazon and then right back on Amazon and pocketing the difference. If I were to start up reselling today, this is the avenue I would take.
Reselling textbooks has gotten very powerful. If I were to do everything over, I wouldnt even bother with low priced books. Fiction, nonfiction, it doesnt matter. Textbooks cost an astronomical amount and theres a huge opportunity.
Sound too good to be true?
There are actually more deals out there like this than youd believe. Thanks to the fact that sellers list used textbooks for low prices on Amazon all the time, not realizing they could trade that book into Amazon for more money.
For example, you might see a Biology 101 textbook that has a used price of $45 and the average used selling price is $70. Meaning you could buy it at the current low price and potentially sell it right back for about a $25 profit.
There are tons of opportunities like this. Students get new textbooks every year. And plenty of savvy students dont want the 4th edition that just came out. They are more than happy with the 3rd edition thats less than half the price.
This opens up a massive opportunity for you to buy the old textbook when new editions come out. Wait a little bit and there will be more than enough buyers for what youre offering.
You can start searching for deals manually or use TexTrader to speed up the process significantly.
Assess Your Books Condition
Use these tips to determine your books condition so you can find out how much its worth.
- Check the dust jacket for tears, chips, stains and creases. Note any blemishes from removed price stickers or signs of shelfwear
- Examine the binding for defects like bent corners, creases, stains, tears and fraying
- Open the book and look for tears, creases, stains and water damage. Note whether a previous owner scribbled notes or scrawled their name inside, and check for remainder marks on the page edges these can be dots, lines or stamps placed by the publisher to denote returned books
What if your books arent worth much? Heres how to get rid of books with little value |
Note that any change in the book since it left the publisher is considered a flaw in condition. List every potential flaw, then determine which of the following grades best describes your books condition.
In general, collectors are interested in books in very fine, fine, near fine or very good conditions. Anything less is considered a copy for casual readers and is priced accordingly. In addition, any book with a remainder mark is not considered collectible unless it is truly scarce.
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Note that dust jacket conditions matter, too. Theyre often listed just after book conditions. For example, a VG/F grade would mean a very good book with a fine dust jacket.
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How To Check Selling Prices Before You Buy
Most of you may already know how to check completed listings on eBay however, if not, its pretty simple. There is an option on the left sidebar that says Completed Listing. Simply check this box, and then only the listings for the particular search topic you have entered that are completed will show.
Chances are that you are not going to find any real gems in the used book section. You probably wont find any books worth thousands and probably not even hundreds of dollars unless you are really lucky.
However, you can certainly find some books valued in the $10 to $20 range.
The problem with selling books this way, is that the margins are so low for the amount of time that it takes to find the books, creating the listing, respond to buyers, pack the books, and take them to the post office. I was probably making way less than minimum wage on my little venture.
However, I think there really is some potential for someone who gets serious about it.
Amazon Fba Vs Merchant Fulfilled

Charlie uses Amazons FBA service. This means he packages up all his books in one big box, prints a label, and sends it off to one of Amazons distribution warehouses.
From there, Amazon handles all the sorting, shipping, tracking, returns, refunds, and so on.
You need an Amazon seller account and there are obviously fees for them handling all of this, but most sellers find this much easier than shipping out individual items themselves.
The interesting part is that Charlie said you can also charge a little more, since your books are now Prime-shipping eligible.
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Why You Should Sell Books On Amazon
Selling books on Amazon is a low-risk and low-budget investment. Books are something that never goes out of style and everybody loves to kick back with one while relaxing.
There is always a large number of books with exciting new releases that people want to get their hands on. This means that the profit margin for selling books is remarkably good. But as a seller, you need to do a fair amount of research on what kind of books you want to sell, find one that has the highest demand, or even opt to sell used books.
Reselling books on Amazon is also a quick and easy way to make money when you find your bookshelves overflowing with books. You know that situation calls for a clearing and instead of getting rid of them by throwing them away, the best way to go is reselling. This way book lovers also find comfort in the fact that it is being purchased by someone else and not going to waste.
If youre thinking, Is selling books on Amazon profitable?, then youd be comforted to know that it is amongst the top 5 . That paired with the fact that Amazon offers convenient fulfillment options for sellers, makes it all the more appealing as you can either choose to ship books on your own or use their FBA and FBM options when you sell larger quantities.
From Amazon Customer To Amazon Seller
There are plenty of how-to videos and articles that guide you step-by-step through the process of selling on Amazon. Here is one I used. I will describe the process at a high level.
- Open an Amazon Seller account. This process is straightforward especially if you already have a regular Amazon account. You may choose a Professional Seller Account, which costs $39.99 per month with no per-sale closing fee, or an Individual Seller Account, which has no monthly fee but charges $0.99/sale. Since I planned to start out small, I opened an Individual Seller Account.
- Use the Amazon Seller app to scan barcodes and identify sales rank and current prices of books on Amazon.
- Create a listing of each book you want to sell. You can take pictures of the books and upload them through the app, describe the condition, and set the price.
At this point, if you want to fulfill the orders yourself you are done. I travel a lot for work, so this would not be practical for me. I opted for a different option known as Fulfilled by Amazon . This should not be confused with BPA, a chemical contained in various polycarbonate plastic products that you should avoid for health reasons.
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What Tools And Startup Costs Are Involved In Book Flipping
As mentioned above, Charlie uses Scout IQ, an app that scans book barcodes and tells you how much that item is selling for on Amazon.
Itll also factor in Amazons sellers fees to give you a profit figure.
The live version costs $14/mo. This version pulls the latest pricing information from the Internet while youre out scanning items. If you have a weak data connection while sourcing, you can download a database of the latest prices for $44/mo. The database version is also much faster!
Charlie said this is all you need to get started reselling items on Amazon.
Note: Amazon has a free personal seller account if you want to test the waters, but youll be charged $0.99 per item sold and there are some other restrictions.
As he started selling more items, he invested in some more tools to scale up his business and process items faster:
- Accelerlist software to list items on Amazon $30/mo This saves Charlie hours of time manually creating listings. Alternative: Inventory Lab.
- Bluetooth barcode scanner Most smartphone cameras do this free, but this makes the process faster. A couple popular options are the Opticon OPN-2006 and the KDC200i.
- Label printer For labeling goods with Amazons shipping details.
How Much Does It Cost To Sell Books On Amazon
An important factor to consider is the overhead costs, delivery charges, royalties, referral fees, etc. Upfront costs include a referral fee of 15% that has to be paid to Amazon for every book that you sell along with a closing fee. There are also fees on your Professional or Individual seller account.
Apart from the upfront costs, a seller needs to factor in operating costs FBA or FBM. FBA charges can keep accumulating over time and they include charges for storage, disposal costs, penalties, and shipping. If youre an author, selling books on Amazons Kindle earns you royalties for every sale that your book makes. Simultaneously, a percentage of the book price goes to Amazon as commission.
All in all, selling books on Amazon does not cost a whole lot of money even after taking all the charges Concerning into account. This is what makes it one of the best categories to explore while selling on Amazon.
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Selling Books On Amazon
So, how do you sell books on Amazon? You can sell anything from collectibles to classics to non-fiction, comic books, and textbooks. A seller can pick whichever genre but it is important to take into consideration which book can boost sales, and what has a high number of average purchases.
New books have more demand than old ones since people usually prefer buying books that are brand new. But new books are also more cumbersome to obtain. You will need to prepare yourself to buy in large quantities from publishers, wholesalers, and distributors.
On the other hand, obtaining used books is relatively easy. There are several places online to buy them from or you can buy them physically from good discount sales like those at bookstores, thrift shops, yard, and estate sales, and sales at libraries.